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Should I put a limiter on master channel?
Hey, guys. Tom S. Ray here from Audio Unity Group, and today I’m going to talk to you about limiters.
Should you be using them on the master channel during the mix?
Ok, so you probably heard that before.
You shouldn’t be using limiter on the master channel or You should be using a limited on the master channel.
So should you put a limiter on a master channel? Let me give you my take on it.
If you are working on your mix and you did all the EQ’ing, compression, et cetera, when you’ve finished your mix I suggest to put the limiter on the master channel to see how the mix will behave once amplified.
Now I’m getting clients from time to time saying after I do the mastering they saying do you know what will have to change something in the mix because the guitars are too prominent or the vocals too harsh or whatnot.
The reason being is because they’ve not heard the mix amplify.
And I strongly suggest to use the limiter on the master channel when you’re mixing OK, at the end of your mix, like, say, you 80 percent or 90 percent done, put the limiter on the threshold down, put the ceiling, to minus one, minus one actually.
And then see how you mix behave, you know, see what’s what’s coming up, because there are some sounds that will come up, you know, let’s say usually it’s vocals not coming up a bit too loud.
What are good limiters?
Good limiters are L1, L2 from Waves they are beautiful limiters and then once you happy with it, once all the levels are done properly the way you want it, this is when you take the limiter off and bounce it for mastering.
You don’t want the limiter to be on the master channel when you bouncing it for mastering.
I promise you when you do this, you have less, issues with the master of that you get from a mastering engineer, you know, just because you would know how loud will the vocal sound once amplified during the mastering stage.
I’ll suggest to check our best vst limiters list to find out what the best limiters are.
What about mix buss compressors?
See in an ideal world, I would suggest to use mix buss compressor.
I know SSL has nice, mix bus plugin. There is another company called PSP. And they got a Vintage Warner.
I would strongly suggest to put that on your master channel and then feed all your mix through the mix bus compressor.
Now, you might want to leave it actually for the mastering just because you just lower down how much and how much threshold would actually get into it.
But what mix compressor do is it glues everything together you know, I heard some great mixes with the mix buss compressor on, and when I started mastering, I say, oh yeah, you can actually hear they’re nicely put together.
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DOWNLOAD PDFSo what's the best approach?
Experiment, experiment, experiment. Use the limiter during your mixing when you’re 80 percent.
And just check the balance, check the different sounds, different instruments.
How do they behave when amplified and used to make the bass compressor, if you can, you know, once again, just a little threshold just to make sure that there is a needle. I know SSL has a needle just to make sure it’s just a little touch, you know, that would do everything together leave it on and send the mastering engineer or just bounce it to the new project when you start your own mastering.
Thanks for reading. Hope that was helpful.Â
Tom
Ps. If you want to learn audio mastering with me – enroll to my online audio mastering course!Â
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Hey I’m Tom, I’m a mastering engineer here at Audio Unity Group. I mostly look after Vinyl production and audio side of things. I hold a bachelor’s degree with honours from Kingston University in London. I love audio and helping others create outstanding-sounding records.
